CHAPTER V.
THE LAY OF THE LAND.
NOW there remained only one of the six. This was the man into whose body the boot of big Stanton had been driven. He lay where he had fallen. He had not stirred so much as a finger in his prostration.
"Hello!" thundered the victor.
Pete Burnside jumped to his feet.
"You through dreaming?" growled Stanton. "Then pick that gent up, throw some water on him, and bring him over here. I got to ask him some questions."
Whereupon he calmly sat down and resumed the meal which had been interrupted by the battle. And down the side of his head, where the rough edge of the stone had grazed him, ran a crimson trickle. It reached his collar and then ran down slowly over his shirt. Pete stared in fascination. This was not courage; this was simply the absence of fear. It made him feel more horror than admiration.
But it was impossible to resist the command. Ah, yes, time had been when he would have smiled to hear such words from any man; time had been when death was nothing, and honor was all. But now he had seen a miracle he had seen his bullets, he could have sworn, strike a human body at twenty paces and less and do no harm!
Pete went obediently to the fallen man and turned the latter upon his back and brought him to the firelight. The man seemed dead, and dead, Pete Burnside thought him at first glance. But when a handful of water was thrown into his face, he recovered almost at once. He sat up, groaning and grunting, clasping himself around the body with both arms and swaying himself back and forth. At length he managed to gasp back his breath.
"Kick the skunk over this way!" bellowed Red Stanton through a gust of laughter, for the sight of the hobo's contortions had made him roar with glee.
Accordingly Pete attempted to help the injured man to his feet, but the latter pushed aside such assistance.
"I don't need no help from you, you rat!" he snarled at Pete. "You sat back by the fire and let us do the dirty work. Yaller—you're yaller, you hound! And when I get shut of this here mess I'll find you ag'in and open your carcass for you and let in the sunshine."
Staggering to his feet the man went to the big man.
"Sit down!" barked Red Stanton.
He reinforced his command by hurling a chunk of wood at the head of the tramp. The latter attempted to dodge, but he was much too weak to move with any celerity. The flying missile struck him across the chest and the arm which he had thrown up to protect himself. With a thud he went down and fell flat on his back.
"Sit up!" thundered Red Stanton. Picking up a coal from the fire at the end of a stick, he tossed it so deftly that it fell near the face of the prostrate man.
Pete Burnside groaned with horror, but the scorching fire quickly brought the unlucky tramp to his senses. Brushing the lump of coal out of harm's way he sat up, but said nothing. He watched his captor in silence. His rat-sharp eyes admitted defeat, admitted that he had endangered his life by the attack in which he had joined upon the giant. Whatever came his way was no more than his due.
"Now, dad," said the giant, "you and me are going to have a little chat—understand?"
The other nodded, but said not a word. And Pete Burnside, watching, tried to moisten his dry lips. What would he have done in the same case? With what courage would he have been able to bear up against such brutality?
Such was the feeling in him, and a base fear set him shaking, for he knew that he would have whined and begged. There was not a courageous fiber left intact in his whole being.
"Now look here," said Red Stanton, "I ain't much of a hand for traveling around and getting the facts about a country. And I want to know what's what in this here range. You've been around here quite a spell, I take it!"
"This is a poor country for a bo," said the tramp. "There ain't any worse. These cow-punchers that ain't got any sense about giving away their time and their money, they sure hate to see anybody around that ain't working steady. They'll ride ten miles and swim a river to rope a bo and get him on the end of a rope, so's they can have some fun with him. And what they call fun is plain torture! Nope, I sure would rather batter the door of jails for handouts than try to get anything out the kitchen of a ranch house. They ain't even got any work to do, unless you can ride and rope and such stuff. But I take it that you know all about that as well as me." And he glanced significantly to the cow-puncher's outfit which Red Stanton was wearing.
"Look here," said the latter, "you been around here. Tell me what's what. I ain't much of a hand to ride the freights. I don't get on with the shacks, and the shacks don't get on with me. I've cleaned up on about a dozen of 'em in the last couple of weeks, but before long a dozen of 'em will start to clean up on me. They're getting to know me, and that means the finish. They'll bean me and roll me off a train that's hitting up fifty per. And that's all! So what I want to do is to work in on some graft around here—me and my friend!"
Here he raised his head and stared at Pete, with a brutal grin which promised the latter that he was by no means through with his hard time.
"I don't get your drift," said the tramp.
"Ain't there nothing stirring around these parts?"
"Nothing that a gent could take a hand in," said the hobo. "The only easy money that's loose is for them that know the country and got hosses and kin ride and shoot. There's a gent named Daly that's cleaning up big rustling cows and bosses up yonder."
"Huh?" grunted Red. "Might that be Joe Daly?"
"Yep, his name is Joe. Is he a friend of yours?"
"He's a friend of a friend of mine," said Red, and he grinned again with great meaning to Pete.
"Oh, he's cleaning up big," said the hobo. "He's up yonder, somewhere in them mountains in the third range."
"Around Mount Sumner?"
"I guess that's the name of the mountain—that one with the three heads."
"Right!"
"What this Daly does is pretty rich. He gets his boys together and starts in running cows. He gets a pile of coin ahead. Then he starts working the game both ways. He comes down to the ranchers. He points out that the sheriff ain't been able to do no good—that's a regular hole-in-the-wall country, so's a sheriff and a posse ain't got no chance at all—and he offers to furnish a sort of irregular police—if they'll pay him something tolerable fat!"
"That sounds queer," said Red Stanton.
"Well, the point was that the news got to spreading around that somebody was running off cows in them Sumner Mountains, and a lot of other gents come along and started following the good example. What Daly wanted to do was to get rid of the competition. And he's done it pretty well! He's got a gang of mighty hard riders and hard fighters, and he ain't no slouch himself. I've heard tell that he cleaned up on Pete Burnside himself, but I guess that's just talk."
"Might be that it is," said Red, grinning again.
And Pete, hanging his head, wished that he were dead indeed. Even now his broken spirit could not rally, for Fate had spoken against him once, and it was folly to go against her dictates.
"Go on with Daly."
"What he does is to collect something pretty fat from some of the ranchers, and he keeps them all free and clear. They never loose so much as one calf in a whole season, you see? And every once in a while Daly rounds up some of the smaller gents that are rustling. He get's 'em and hangs 'em in a row on a tree and drives back the cows to the ranch that owns 'em. But some of the ranchers ain't going to pay no money for a tax to a gent like Daly. That's mostly because old Doc Peters keeps his head up and says it's a plumb disgrace, if they got to pay blackmail. Well, those gents have a pretty bad time, because them are the ones that Daly makes his own special picking, and he works 'em right down to the bone. That's the only game that I know around here. If you want to try your hand at something pretty big, you, can throw in with Daly. But it sure means a whole pack of hard riding!"
"I hate riding," said Red with a sigh. "I ain't got no comfort in the saddle." And he looked down gloomily at his great bulk. "How long has Daly been running things?" he asked.
"I dunno—three or four months, maybe longer."
"And don't nobody know what he's doing?"
"Everybody guesses that he's robbing some and blackmailing others, but they ain't sure."
"How long will he last?"
"Until the gents up in them parts get together and make an army and clean out the hills. If you want to get a fancy job and a salary, you can go up to old Peters' ranch and hire out as a plain cow-puncher. He can't keep no hands, because Daly just cleans out his men as quick as they come!"
"How's that?"
"Lays for 'em in the hills and gives 'em a run whenever they get far away from the ranch house. Tied one gent up in a tree, and he stayed there three days. He was nutty when they cut him down, and he ain't got his sense back yet, they say!"
"What would Peters pay?"
"Mostly anything."
"Well," said the big. man, "I guess this talk ain't been wasted. Now—get out!"
The hobo rose.
"And if you sneak around and try to get back at me, I'll tear you in two!"
But that thunderous voice was not needed. The hobo shrank back to the edge of the shrubbery. There he glared at the conqueror, with keen, glittering eyes of fear and hatred. A moment later he had melted into the background.
"Well, Pete?" asked Red Stanton, turning on the latter. "How does it sound to you?"
"What?" gasped Pete, hardly daring to guess what, the big man. intended.
"How does it sound to you to go up to Peters ranch and get a job, being a sort of a garrison in the fort, eh?"
Pete Burnside drew a long breath. It was too terrible to have been inspired by any one except the devil himself. Go to the Sumner Mountains? Run the risk of encountering that rock of his destruction, Joe Daly himself? He felt the blood rush out of his brain, and he was sick at heart.
"Red," he said heavily, "I can't go!"
"Can't go?" thundered the giant. "Can't go? Ain't I got to have somebody to go along and take care of me? Sure you're going, and don't forget it."